Review

In England, a series of women are found dead, with missing rectangles of skin, tattoos neatly cut out. The tattoos are invocations (spells) that give them certain magic abilities. A man is hunting and killing them. Messages are left: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

Jude Wolf, rebel daughter of a billionaire, has been cast out of her family, albeit with a house and a generous allowance. She is searching desperately for a spellwriter to help cure a rotting disease caused by angry demons and her early, inept occult meddling.

Zara Jones, former top student, is searching for a way to bring her sister back from the dead: she was killed a year ago in mysterious circumstances. Zara’s running out of time.

Emer Byrne lives in Oxford, posing as a student, going to lectures, sleeping in the common room and swiping ID cards to get free food. She’s been on the run since childhood.

As events draw these three women together, an opportunity opens up to find the killer. Unless the killer finds them first.

*

I really enjoyed this. Although it is quite dark in places, it’s also well written, surprisingly funny, occasionally glamorous and a smidge romantic, with great supernatural action. It’s a page-turner!

I listened to the audiobook, which was good. At first I thought the narrator was pausing in slightly weird places, but she does great accents.

I found the cover unappealingr:

Unfortunate because her previous book House of Hollow (also a banger) had an amazing cover, which is why I picked it up in the first place.

(I picked up The Invocations after it won the 2025 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction.)

Suitable for Year 7 & up, although not recommended for the sensitive.

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Sometimes dark but relatively mild YA depictions of: witchcraft; chronic pain/disability, supernatural violence; dysfunctional family & family bullying/violence; a massacre; serial killer. Some swearing (f-words, s-words, other). Main relationship is wlw. Other relationships are mlw.

*

Sutherland, K. (2024). The invocations (K. Griffiths, Narr.) [Audiobook]. Penguin Random House Australia Audio.

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I read this novel via Libby — support your local library!